"She has nothing, in short, to recommend her, but being an excellent walker."

23 September 2008

If Obama Loses

With six weeks before the election, and the silliness of the post-convention weeks behind us, it seems a good bet that Obama is going to win this thing. The country's focus is now on the tanking economy, and that's usually good news for the Democrats, particularly when it's increasingly clear that the Republican candidate has no idea what to do about it.

(Of course, now that Bush appears to be going after Osama bin Laden in a big way, there is the possibility of an October Surprise that tips the election towards McCain, though I don't know why it would. It'd be great to eliminate bin Laden, but seriously, seven years after 9/11 and we're supposed to be impressed by this?)

If Obama wins, though, it's not going to be the unqualifiedly good thing his supporters are hoping for. Treasury Secretary Paulson is about to bail out Wall Street using close to a trillion dollars of tax payer money, and it's unclear to everyone whether it will even solve anything. Whoever is president in January 2009 is going to have to deal with the mess for a long time, and it seems fairly certain that very few of the big-ticket items on Obama's to-do list -- health care, energy research, tax cuts -- are going to be easily achievable.

If McCain ekes out a win, though, because of his "experience", because of Palin, because of the Bradley effect, he will be the one who is stuck holding the Bush bag, and there will be little danger of the Democrats getting the lasting blame for it. Of course, that's what we all thought about that other close-to-a-trillion-dollar expenditure Bush foisted on us -- the Iraq War -- but somehow, Bush got a second term, and McCain is still competitive.

1 Comments:

Anonymous said...

At this point, I don't think we can worry about who will be "stuck holding the bag". We're all holding that bag, and will be for much of our lifetimes. We're in several forms of crisis , and we need a leader that can start us on the long road home -- consequences to the party be damned.